How I Learned... #5: How I Learned to Conquer Writer's Block (in theory, anyway)

Not long ago, I dug up a novel I wrote in my 1st and 2nd years of high school. And... wow.

It's awful.

I mean, I knew it was bad the moment I finished it—I remember that distinctly, and I remember fully intending to go back and rework it into something of marginally less suckitude, but in those days I wasn't a big fan of the whole 'editing' thing. In fact, the idea of rewriting a novel I'd just spent two solid years working on intimidated the hell out of me. And I never did get around to editing it. At some point in college I printed it out so I'd have a hard copy, and I'm very glad I did, because shortly afterward I had a computer burnout that wiped seven years worth of work—my lifetime's work, actually, up to that point.

Also, I guess in 9th grade I didn't really fully comprehend the notions of plagiarism and copyright infringement. The novel in question was basically a name-change of a crossover fan fiction written by a friend with whom I've now long since lost touch (a great pity, she was an immense inspiration in those early days), and whose composite world she had very kindly given me permission to play with and continue… on a strictly fanon basis, mind you.

Over the years, the fan fiction and my work of blatant theft the original novel I'd based on it faded from my thoughts. Recently, though, I revisited those initial pieces of fan fiction, both hers and mine, and decided to rewrite some of my stories strictly for my own pleasure. In doing so, two things happened:

-- my revision of my rather simple and silly piece of fanfic suddenly morphed into a commentary on the supplanting of pagan beliefs by Christianity in 5th century Ireland

-- I remembered that the original author and I had traded several emails about some of her characters, and as I was going to be working with those characters again, I decided to check my files to see if I still had the hard-copies of those emails. I don't, but I found the manuscript of my rip-off novel.

No, you can't see it. It's disjointed, derivative, and full of modern speech patterns... The three best scenes in the whole book are only good because they were written jointly with the original author. I mean, I'm seriously shocked. I remembered some problems with story continuity but I had no idea the dialogue had aged so very, very badly. Also, there are a lot of thinly disguised portraits of high school classmates in that book. Very thinly disguised… it reminds me of an exchange from the MTV show Daria:

Mr. O'Neill: "You could read one of your essays! What about the one about being a big misfit whom everybody hates? The other kids'll really relate to that. I know I do…"
Daria: "I don't know if that's such a good idea. That's the one about comparing the sophomore class to barnyard animals? It names names."
Mr. O'Neill: "Oh yeah…"

Not quite that blatant, but yeah. There are people from high school I haven't thought about in YEARS who were suddenly called to mind when I read that stolen book again.

(By the way, the reason I'm not naming the fandoms or the person in question is because A) I am well-aware now that what I was doing in high school was wrong, and I don't want to profit by it; B) the reason I'm rewriting my own fanfic now is for my own pleasure and edification—editing, I've come to realize, is good for the soul. But fan fiction as a discipline all its own is near and dear to my heart, and I should probably do a ramble about it one of these days.)

The point of this long-winded digression is that I wrote this book in my freshman and sophomore years, and it's really quite bad. I spent most of my junior year avoiding trying to edit the thing. And then in senior year, I wrote "Egg of the Damned," which while not spectacular, has a plot that's at least 90% coherent and possesses an undeniably unique setting and cast of characters.

And the crux of that improvement, I believe, is the fact that the story was conceived while I was visiting Great Britain and Ireland for my 17th birthday. I'd spent two years wandering through a high school trying to write a high fantasy, and all I got out of it was an additional year of just trying to forget the book.

It's amazing what a brief trip abroad can do for one's abilities... what a brief trip anywhere can do for the creative mind. I used to be completely unable to write at home or in my dorm room at school; everything I did was done in longhand in class or in the library. All I did at home was type up what I'd written that day. It's become easier now that I spent most of my time working in an office, but I still carry at least three notebooks wherever I go.

So that's my first, best cure for writer's block: wherever you've been spending most of your time writing, get up and go somewhere else. Down the hall, down the block, across the border or the ocean, just change your location. If nothing else, you'll have something different to stare at while you struggle with your plots.